Sometimes I think it would be fun to run a critical
thinking course focussing on how to spot fallacious reasoning that only ever used examples drawn from the contemporary media.
Depending on how sensitive Brown students are, I could end up getting accused
of every sort of bias imaginable. (And the evidence is that some of them are much
too sensitive.) But I don’t have such a course yet, so I’ll have to stick
to the blog. This is from the Washington
Post.

"This Lott
story has continued primarily because of criticism from conservatives,"
said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster based in Atlanta. “If the only people
raising doubts were Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, this story would have died
of its own weight several days ago. It’s the anguish from conservatives that
has kept the story going.”

Um, yeah. The hidden premise here that only
people who ‘raised doubts’ were Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and conservatives.
Given that extra premise, the conclusion that “it’s the anguish from
conservatives that has kept the story going” I guess would follow. And you
know, if you’re prepared to count Josh
Marshall, Paul
Krugman and Al
Gore as conservatives, well the hidden premise still wouldn’t be true, but
at least there wouldn’t be a refutation I could find within five seconds of
scanning the NY Times.